| Telos 203 has just been released, and the theme is “The Manifold Foundations of Human Rights.” As a document meant to guide U.S. foreign policy, the Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights focused on the way in which human rights have been justified in the United States as well as the progress in correcting violations of these rights. Yet a key aspect of the Report was its insistence that foundations of human rights vary from place to place and from culture to culture. The U.S. experience has been one example of how human rights have been conceived and established. Other cultures have had their own conceptions and histories. At the same time, all cultures have some conception of human dignity. Though some might want to deny such dignity to others, none would want to deny such dignity to themselves. This commonality lies at the basis of the universality of human rights. The essays in Telos 203, based on papers presented at a 2021 conference at the University of Notre Dame organized by Paolo Carozza, grapple with the ways in which the idea of the universality of human rights can be reconciled with the multiple foundations of human rights that we can find throughout the world. You can read my introduction to the issue here. |
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